MACH, a provider of hub-based mobile communications exchange solutions, today launched service that is said to allow mobile operators to meet the needs of customers travelling to South Africa for this year's FIFA World Cup Finals. The MACH World Cup Pack provides operators with voice and GPRS coverage in the region, a rating engine to deliver segmented retail marketing promotions to stimulate usage, and assures the protection of revenues with NRTRDE-based fraud protection.
Some three million football supporters are expected to travel to South Africa to support the 31 foreign teams playing for the trophy. For mobile operators, this creates both the opportunity to generate event-specific roaming revenues, and the challenge to deliver a seamless communications service to travelling fans. With less than 100 days to go before the first ball is struck, mobile operators have little time to address three immediate priorities: to establish voice and GPRS roaming agreements to ensure coverage, to deliver marketing and promotional packages to stimulate usage, and to set up the processes to minimise revenue leakage due to roaming fraud.
The World Cup Pack brings together three of MACH's mobile roaming services. Firstly, MACH's ‘Close the Gap' Roaming Implementation services deliver "out-of-the-box" roaming agreements tailored for specific operator needs. MACH schedules and performs the necessary IREG and TADIG tests, and secures timely service launch. Second, MACH's Retail Roaming Marketing solutions allow operators to create and implement segmented retail promotions based on where fans are, the time of the matches, and even the match score. Operators can offer customers targeted incentives such as a free SMS when their team scores or half-price outbound calls during matches. Thirdly, having such a high concentration of mobile roaming users in one location requires an effective mechanism to identify and prevent roaming fraud. MACH's NRTRDE HUB, the industry's largest NRTRDE-based roaming fraud protection system, will analyze every CDR and report suspicious user behaviour in near real time.